


The Effects of Caffeine on Team Morale

by allfireburns



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Technology, Coffee, Community: writerinadrawer, Friendship, Gen, Humor, POV Third Person, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/pseuds/allfireburns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alien technology is not to be used for our own purposes. Coffee is an exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Effects of Caffeine on Team Morale

No one questions Ianto and Tosh working on their own projects. Jack doesn't mind if it doesn't get in the way of anything else; you don't gather a team as talented as Torchwood without giving them ways to occupy themselves.

Even when the two of them begin working on something together, it raises no eyebrows. No one notices that they only work on it when Owen and Suzie are gone, Jack occupied with paperwork. Tosh and Ianto are easily overlooked anyway. When they're _trying_ to go unnoticed...

There's so much alien technology in storage that no one ever uses, or probably ever will use. Things that aren't useful as weapons, scanning devices, medical technology...

Ianto knows where to find _anything_ in the Hub, even hidden in a box in some musty corridor and no one's looked at the contents of said box for seventy-five years. He locates the necessary technology, and quietly spirits it to the atrium, where Tosh patches it into the machine so elegantly it's almost sculpture, and Ianto modifies records so no one goes looking for the technology and finds it missing. He doesn't expect Owen, Suzie or Jack to want it, but he'd hate to inconvenience some poor member of Torchwood, fifty years in the future.

They cover any hint of alien technology on the machine itself. Looking at it, it appears nothing more than an extremely complex coffee maker.

They celebrate with mugs of the best coffee they've ever had.

* * *

When Jack finds out, months later, there's a long lecture about how "we do not use alien technology for our own purposes, even when those purposes are coffee". He locks the modified coffee maker away, which everyone finds entirely unjustified.

The team spends days glowering sleepily at Jack, with hatred only mustered by the extremely tired and undercaffeinated. Jack's joking comments about addiction are met with fiercer glares.

The third day, Gwen brings in her coffeemaker, because it's better than nothing. One day of Gwen's coffee is enough to convince them to leave it alone from there and return to shooting Jack dark glances.

Ianto starts bringing them coffee from home, kept in travel mugs, pointedly leaving Jack out. He is unimpressed by Jack's wounded expression.

After a week, Jack returns the coffee maker to its proper position, with another, somewhat briefer lecture about how "we still do not use alien technology for our own purposes". Coffee, he's decided, counts as a necessary boost to team morale.


End file.
